McCarthy: Obama Team’s Account of Benghazi Is ‘Flat-Out Fantasy’

The Obama administration’s account of the Libyan attacks on the U.S.
consulate is “flat-out fantasy,” according to the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Andrew McCarthy.

McCarthy, who helped launch the investigations into the September 11 attacks, led the terrorism prosecution against the defendants convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and has been decorated with the highest honors by the Justice Department. He is also a bestselling author and released a new e-book called "Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy."

Watch the exclusive interview here.

He said the recent attacks in Benghazi, Libya, which left four Americans dead, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, can be traced to President Barack Obama’s policies in the region.

“The Obama administration account is flat-out fantasy,” he said. “The rioting in that region, which happens on virtually any pretext — whether it's the cockamamie film that nobody has seen or teddy bears or burnt Korans or cartoons or whatever it will be next — those are all pretexts. The real reason that this happens is because of the dominant ideology in the region and in his region in particular, Benghazi. What is going on there is a result of the Obama administration's policy decisions in Libya, specifically jumping in unprovoked on the side of jihadists and Islamic supremacists against the Libyan regime.”

The Obama team failed in their mission to protect the consulate and its diplomats, McCarthy said, and a misguided policy in Libya and in the Middle East only empowered the attackers.

“We shouldn't have installations in places where we can't protect them and, in that particular part of the world, Benghazi, what we have is basically a policy that is at war with reason and fact,” McCarthy said. “In Benghazi, they hate the United States. We happen to jump in on their side anyway in the Libyan conflict and what ended being the aftermath of that is that arsenals of weapons that Gadhafi had that were otherwise locked down are now in the hands of enemies of the United States. Our policy has actually empowered them and, frankly, the weakness that we've shown is provocative to them and, as a result, we're much more vulnerable in a place like Benghazi and they shouldn't have needed intelligence from the Libyan government to tell them that.

That would be obvious to anybody who spent any time there.”

McCarthy doesn’t buy into the notion of an Arab Spring, saying that the region still yearns for more repressive standards.

“The Arab Spring was a myth and it continues to be a myth,” he said.
“It's a narrative that falsely suggests that this is a region yearning for freedom in the sense that the West recognizes freedom. In poll after poll, and now election after election, what they tell us is that what they crave is Sharia and its repressive standards. We may find that to be unbelievable but they have a different way of looking at the world from us. They're a different civilization and it's not that they don't get the West or that they don't understand the West. They understand us fine. They think that their civilization, or what passes for civilization there, is superior to ours and, essentially, that's what this is about.”

The billions of dollars that the Obama administration earmarked to support Middle Eastern countries in the wake of the perceived Arab Spring should be directed elsewhere, McCarthy said.

“Having a democratic election or having an election, whether you want to call it democratic or not, is not a democracy,” he said. “Democracy is a culture. It's a way of living. It's a way of looking at the world. The American people, for example, were a democratic people, a free-liberty culture long before we had a government or a Constitution. What they've tried to do in this region is substitute the procedures that you find in democracy, namely voting, for example, for real democratic culture.”

He continued: “So if what we were actually promoting with the billions that we're spending over there is the real inculcation of a democratic culture, that would be one thing but, instead, what we've done is substituted democratic processes like voting for real democratic culture. It has resulted in the ascendancy of Islamists whose goal is not democratic culture. Their goal is quite the opposite. It's a repressive Sharia system.”
McCarthy said next week’s U.N. gathering of world leaders is no different than any other week in that terrorists are trying to “hit us all the time.” He commended those who have protected America from more attacks since 9/11.

“I actually think that one thing we ought to take comfort with . . . is that we know we have enemies in the world who want to hit and there has not been a reprise of 9/11,” he said. “That's largely because of the good work of the men and women on the front lines in our intelligence services and in the military where, you know, frankly, dead and captured terrorists don't blow stuff up so the military operations that we've had in the last decade have been the real key to our security. But, you know, they're trying to hit us all of the time.

They don't need a reason to do it like the U.N. If they could hit us today, they would do it.”